A key Georgia lawmaker said he is eager to investigate a no-bid grant awarded to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ office by the Biden Justice Department given to her while she probed President Donald Trump for alleged violations of Georgia state laws.

In February, Just the News reported that Willis, who vowed from the earliest days of her term to pursue an investigation into President Trump for his efforts to challenge the 2020 election results in the state, was "invited" by the Justice Department to apply for a lucrative sole-source grant in 2022. 

Willis’ office ultimately received $2,000,000 to implement programs under the Justice Department’s 2022 Office of Justice Programs Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative grant. 

Biden allegedly said: “We're going to ensure, by any means possible [...] that Donald Trump will not take office"

“We have a lot of questions about that,” said Georgia State Senator Greg Dolezal, a Republican. Dolezal is one of the lawmakers who led the state-level investigation in Fani Willis’ prosecution of President Trump.  

“That's really going to be the next phase of what we're looking into is the tie to what could have been a carrot from the time that Joe Biden put up the bat signal on November 13. I think it was where he said, “We're going to ensure, by any means possible, that we demonstrate that Donald Trump will not take office,” Dolezal told the Just the News, No Noise TV show last week. 

“On that very same day, Nathan Wade spent eight hours on the phone with the White House. Now, of course, he can't remember what that eight-hour conversation was about, but we've got our guesses as to what it was about,” he added. 

The award, which was opened in April 2022 as a competitive grant, appears to have been provided to Fulton County as the “sole source,” according to documents obtained by Just the News through an Open Records lawsuit earlier this year. The Justice Department defines a sole source procurement as “noncompetitive,” meaning no other entity competed against Fulton for the award. 

Beyond the grant details, the documents show that Willis’ office coordinated extensively with the Biden Justice Department and White House as well as Democrats on the House Jan. 6 investigative committee as she built a failed criminal case against President Donald Trump and his allies, Just the News previously reported.

The award of the noncompetitive grant for Willis came while her office was preparing that case and while federal prosecutors were investigating Trump under similar pretexts. 

On February 10th, 2021, Willis announced that she was opening a probe into Trump for violations of Georgia state law to include “solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.”

In early January, President Trump had claimed that the election in the state was marred by fraud and urged state officials to intervene in the process. Several Trump allies were also investigated over an effort to form and send to Congress an alternate slate of presidential electors to challenge the official results that they believed were possibly invalidated by fraud.

By August 2023, Willis indicted Trump and allies on state racketeering, conspiracy and other charges after the more than two-year-long investigation. Under Willis, Georgia became the first state to do so, followed later by fellow Democratic Party prosecutors in Arizona and Wisconsin who also went after Trump allies.